


perennial

by untrustworthyglitch



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 17:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13506114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untrustworthyglitch/pseuds/untrustworthyglitch
Summary: There's a flower in Barry's pocket, cursed to bloom back into existence at the turn of every year along with the rest of the crew, and every year he holds it up to the light and hands it to Lup just to see that razor-sharp smile.He's doomed from the start.





	perennial

**Author's Note:**

> howdy y'all, it's me, back at it again with that good good romance shit. i was thinking about how lup and taako probably look a lot alike but have different smiles/laughs and then thought of barry using that to tell them apart and then the romance gremlin who lives in my brain took control of my hands and made me type like 4k words of sheer fluff. enjoy! :D

“You need to get to know your teammates,” Barry had been told, and had been promptly shushed when he protested that he had already read all of their files cover to cover. Apparently, face to face contact is important for developing lasting coworker relationships, and now Barry is here, lightly sweaty, wearing third-day jeans, staring at an elf that might be either of the twins. He thinks including a pair of twins on this mission is a cruel joke or possibly an experiment to see how long it takes the crew to learn their differences, but then again, he has read their files, and they are both more than qualified to be on this mission.

Barry extends a hand for a strong, polite handshake, proper and regulation and hopefully not shaking with nerves, and the elf gives him a knuckle bump. He blinks at them. Taako-or-Lup grins, and he swallows hard. There’s something sharp in that smile, something pointed around the edges that says maybe they aren’t being entirely polite. It’s worrying, when he remembers that he’s going to be having to spend a good deal of time in close proximity with this person.

“I’m Barry,” Barry says. His voice is steadier than his knees.

“Lup,” they reply, popping the _p._ They toss their hair over their shoulder and frown at it. “I’m the girl twin. Hey, you think I’d look better with short hair? I’m thinking of cutting it off.”

Barry starts to reply, but is interrupted by another elf, presumably the other twin, who throws himself over Lup’s shoulders and flings one arm over his eyes dramatically. He sighs and groans and goes entirely limp, leaving Lup to make an annoyed face and grab him under the arms to support him.

“Listen, Lulu, I’m fuckin’ over it. I just talked to a guy about plants for ten minutes. Plants! Like that’s even a valid conversation topic!” he says, flailing his hands wildly as he talks. Lup laughs and shoves at him until he’s standing, and that’s when Barry realizes that they’re entirely, completely identical. He’d known they were twins, of course, but this level of similarity is uncanny.

They have the same nose, the same sparkling eyes, the same delicate jawline. Their hair is the same color, though his is kept back in an elaborate braid whereas hers is hanging down to frame her face. Their makeup is equally loud, equally flawless. Even their nails are painted the same fiery red, filed into perfection.

“Well, we’re going to be living together for a couple months. We might have to resort to talking about plants at some point to keep ourselves entertained,” Barry says, and that’s when he notices the differences.

Both twins grin at him, but they could not be more dissimilar. Lup’s smile is just as sharp and pointy as earlier, laced with just a touch of haughtiness. Her brother’s smile is gap-toothed and too wide and too bright. Where Lup is all fine edges and delicate razor edge, her brother is blunt light, and Barry knows in an instant that this is how he will learn to tell them apart.

“I’m Taako, by the way,” says Lup’s brother, extending a hand delicately, as though it’s up for Barry to decide whether to shake it or kiss the back of it. Barry goes with the handshake, and Taako pouts. “From TV."

“You’re from the Transmutation and Variations Department?” Barry asks, almost taken aback. That wasn’t in the file. He hadn’t thought so many magic users would be employed on the IPRE’s exploratory interplanar hop. He’s already spoken to their pilot, who, in addition to being the best captain the academy has turned out so far this century, is a truly astounding illusory magic user. He also knows that their chronicler is, supposedly, top of her class in arcana. Why they need so many wildly talented magic users is beyond Barry, and frankly a little worrying. What are they expected to meet, out there beyond the borders of their own planar system?

“You know it,” Taako laughs. He tugs off one of the many bangles on his arms and holds it up so that it catches the light. Before Barry’s very eyes, the bracelet glows and vibrates with energy, and between one blink and the next Taako is suddenly holding a delicate blue flower, which he presents to Barry with a flourish.

“Did you--Did you just waste a spell slot to show off?” Barry asks, holding the stem between two fingers. It’s a very pretty flower, all dark blue and tiny blooms.

“You bet, homie,” Taako says with a wink. “Hey, we’re hitting the clubs after this little meet and greet. You in?”

“Uh, I better not,” Barry says. Taako and Lup roll their eyes and call him a nerd, but there’s no real malice there when they bid him farewell and retreat into the crowd. He watches them go, identical walks and identical hand motions as they chatter to one another, and rolls the flower between his fingers contemplatively.  
  


Things go spectacularly wrong.

They punch through the barrier between planes with a sickening lurch, thick columns of tar hot on their heels, and come to a dead stop in the atmosphere of a planet Barry has never seen before.

“We have to go back,” Magnus says. He gets to his feet, shoulders squared, and Barry wonders how, exactly, he isn’t doubled over in fear. Barry’s heart is pounding and there’s a catch in his chest that means he’s definitely going to have a panic attack in the very near future. He thinks he might be sick, or dying, or, more likely, both.

“We can’t,” Captain Davenport says. His voice is strong but hollow, all emotion gone. “I can’t get the ship to go back. We’re stuck here.”

“We’re fucking _what_ ,” one of the twins demands. They stand, hands defiant on hips, and glare daggers at the captain. With the sharp edges of their winged eyeliner, it’s an intimidating sight.

“I can’t get back through to our plane,” Captain Davenport explains. He hits a button on the console and takes his hands off the wheel, where they’d been clutching hard enough to leave indents. He turns around in his chair to face them but makes no move to stand. “Right now, and until we figure out a way to return, we’re stuck here.”

“That’s bullshit,” Magnus says vehemently.

“Burnsides, we just watched our home planet be destroyed by something we cannot understand and cannot fight. We have no way of getting back there, and even if we did, it is highly unlikely that we would find anything left to fight for. For now, we make do here.”

“Magnus,” Magnus mutters. “Call me Magnus.”

“Magnus,” Captain Davenport corrects. He sighs and leans forward, scrubbing a hand across his face. For one brief moment, there is fear and panic in the captain’s eyes, but he shoves it back and pulls professionalism back on like a warm blanket.

Barry, meanwhile, hyperventilates.

He puts his elbows on his knees and bends forward, face in hands, and tries his best to get his heaving breaths under control. He knows it’s definitely not ideal, to have just escaped certain doom with a crew of highly capable individuals and then launch right into a panicked tailspin, but that thought just makes it even harder to get oxygen past the sheer breathless fear clawing its way up his ribcage.

“Oh, shit,” one of the twins says, and then their voice is suddenly much closer. “You okay there, babe?”

Barry flinches. There is a small sound of apology from whichever twin has taken it upon themself to comfort him.

“Hey, I’m gonna sit next to you, and when you can breathe again, you can tell me how great my hair looks, okay?” Lup-or-Taako says, and he feels the shift of the empty seat next to him as they perch on the edge. Distantly, Barry is extremely embarrassed. Presently, he’s extremely grateful for a minor distraction.

Slowly, Barry gets his breathing under control, and sighs into his shaking hands. The elf, next to him, doesn’t say anything. Sound starts to filter back in, and he can hear Magnus murmuring soothing things to a crying Lucretia while Merle and Captain Davenport quietly discuss the possibilities of landing the Starblaster on this foreign planet.

“Better?” Lup-or-Taako asks when he can finally bring himself to look up.

“Better,” he confirms. His voice is raspy and rough around the edges, and he digs in his pocket for a cough drop. He frowns when there aren’t any, but his fingers do find something, which he pulls out in confusion.

It’s a flower, small and blue and delicate, transmuted last night out of one of the bracelets that decorate Taako’s arms. He must have put it in his pocket without thinking about it, and grabbed these jeans to wear today instead of the clean ones he’d planned on wearing.

Barry turns the flower around to look at it from every angle, and on a whim he holds it out toward the elf. Their eyes go round and they take it carefully, tucking it behind one pointed ear to mingle with loose hair. Their smile, when they grin at him, is sharp and whip-quick, and that’s definitely Lup.

“Thanks, babe,” she says with a wink. She pats him on the knee and stands to rejoin her brother in their seat.

They put the ship down eventually, in a clearing surrounded by thick brush, and Barry spends a year running between trees and chasing a glowing ball of light.  
  


Barry drags in a deep, wild breath. For one terrifying moment, all he can see is white, static, the sickening emptiness of the void between planes. It takes him a second, but he realizes he’s sitting in his chair on the Starblaster, white-knuckling the arms of the seat, heart pounding.

“What just happened?” Lucretia demands, breathless.

“I don’t know,” Magnus says from the floor, and Barry’s heart does an acrobatic stunt out of sheer surprise.

“Magnus!” he half-shouts.

“Barry!” Magnus shouts right back.

“Holy shit, my dude,” says one of the twins. “Didn’t you just beef it?”

“Maybe?” Magnus says. He sits up slowly, gingerly, careful of any injuries he might have sustained. Logically, he should have sustained a great many, but that shouldn’t even matter. He hadn’t been on the ship when they’d taken off. Barry had watched him get swallowed up by thick clouds of blackness, swirling and glinting in the sunlight. He’d seen Magnus die. He can’t stop seeing it, over and over in the back of his head. He sees Magnus’s fierce determination, his hands steady on the handle of his axe, his shoulders broad and tight against the gale of malignant blackness. He’d screamed, he’s pretty sure. There’d been a great deal of screaming.

“Are you hurt?” Merle asks eventually, coming to kneel next to Magnus.

“I dunno,” he says eventually. He runs his hands over his arms, down his legs. “My head hurts. Like, a lot.”

“You’ve got a killer black eye, but you’ll live,” Merle says.

Magnus reaches one hand up to touch at the purpled skin around one of his eyes. It’s the same as the last time they’d jumped through the gap between planes. They’re all here, sitting exactly where they were initially, the twins holding hands and Davenport clutching the wheel for dear life and Barry, breath weak and heart pounding, digging his blunt nails into the armrests.

A thought occurs, and Barry reaches into his pocket. The flower, long wilted and tossed aside, is there, crisp and fresh as it was one year ago.

He holds it out toward the twin he thinks is Lup, whose sharp smile is grim and devoid of any joy.  
  


“Hey, Taako!” Magnus yells, startling Barry out of a fitful sleep. He sits up and fixes the glasses that are askew on his nose.

“Fuck off, I’m Lup,” she yells back, just as loud, and Barry is definitely not falling back to sleep after this.

“Oh, sorry,” Magnus yells. They really need to work on his inside voice some more, especially considering that the planet they’re currently orbiting is entirely made of ice with nowhere to get out and stretch their legs. They’re trapped on the Starblaster for this cycle, and if Barry has to live with Magnus’s sheer enthusiasm for that long, he thinks he might start going a bit stir-crazy.

“Learn to tell the difference, jeez,” Lup says, and tosses her hair over her shoulder. She shoots Barry a quick smile before heading below deck, and his heart skips a beat. He really, really needs to tamp down the growing crush on his crewmate.

“I really am trying to tell them apart,” Magnus pouts. He throws himself onto the seat next to Barry and crosses his arms over his broad chest.

“They have different smiles,” Barry offers. “If you make them laugh, you can tell the difference.”

Magnus nods along contemplatively. “How do you make them laugh?”

“Honestly? I wish I knew.” Barry really doesn’t know how he does it. All he knows is that sometimes he says something inane or offhand and it sends the twins into peals of laughter or fits of giggles, wide smiles and teary eyes. He wishes he knew what, exactly, he does or says that is so funny, so that he could replicate it more often. He’d give almost anything to see Lup smile at him.

That thought is going to get him in trouble, he knows it.  
  


Two years into what Taako and Lup have dubbed their “out of time escapade,” the other members of the crew still have trouble telling Lup and Taako apart. Not a day goes by that Lup doesn’t roll her eyes and correct one of them for getting her name wrong. At least twice a week a small argument breaks out among the crew when the twins get fed up with being mistaken for one another.

“We don’t even look alike!” one of them shouts, throwing their hands in the air. Barry think he’s looking at Taako, but the twin on the other side of the room has their hair back in an intricate braid, which is more Taako’s style. Given, it’s entirely possible that Taako would braid his sister’s hair, which puts Barry firmly at square one.

“You’re literally identical!” Magnus whines. He’s on the receiving end of the annoyance today.

“I can generally tell the difference,” Barry says. Both twins fix him with wide smiles, and Barry can’t help but smile back. The twin in front of him grins wide and bright and dazzlingly happy. The twin with the braid smiles at him with enough dagger-sharp joy that he could cut himself on it if he’s not careful. Turns out he was right when he decided which was which.

“Oh yeah? Which is which, then?” Merle says. He’s sitting on the couch they’d dragged back to the Starblaster last cycle with his feet on the coffee table Magnus had lovingly carved out of a sizeable oak tree.

“That’s Lup,” Barry says, pointing, and her lips quirk up even further. He levels a finger at her brother, who blows him a kiss. “And that’s Taako.”

“See, we look totally different,” Lup says firmly.

“Maybe you should cut your hair,” Lucretia suggests. She leafs through one of her journals, running a finger down columns of perfect text. This journal is bright blue with pages edged in gold, and Barry thinks it’s the one she writes notes about her crewmates in. “You mentioned wanting to cut it a while back, I believe.”

Lup’s eyes light up. “I did! Plus, now that I apparently get recycled every year, I don’t have to worry about growing it back out. Someone hand me the scissors!”

Taako ends up cutting most of Lup’s hair off, leaving her with a very short cropped undercut style that is half disaster, half fashion, and entirely Lup. She glances in a mirror and screams with glee, dragging her brother into a tight hug.

“Looks nice,” Barry tells her, and she smiles, which is exactly what he’d hoped for.  
  


Barry jolts back to life for… gods, is this the third time he’s died? He hadn’t meant to die during that one. He’s a necromancer; he’s supposed to be the one doing the yanking rather than being yanked back to life. It doesn’t sit well, and though he doesn’t have a panic attack every time they do the tango between planar systems anymore, he still has to take a few deep breaths before his heart stops pounding deafeningly in his ears.

“Soooo,” Taako drawls, standing and cracking his back. They’ve been together on this endless mission for long enough that it’s simple, now, to know which twin is which. He’s astounded that he even had trouble in the first place. “What’d I miss?”

“You died too?” Barry asks. Taako had been alive and kicking when Barry caught some kind of plague and, _yuck_ , drowned in his own blood.

“Sure fuckin’ did, Patient Zero,” Taako replies easily.

It takes a second, but the guilt comes crashing down on Barry’s shoulders. “Oh.”

“Hey, no big. We literally can’t be perma-killed, so it doesn’t matter,” Taako says, breezy and relaxed, but Barry feels _awful._ The last planar system had been alright, generally, except for the devastating plague that was sweeping the continent and wiping out entire families seemingly overnight. It started with sniffles and ended about a week later with coughing up thick black blood, and none of it had been painless.

“Gods, Taako, I’m sorry,” he says.

Taako shrugs. “I guess it’s technically not your fault. You do owe me, though.”

“Yeah, sure,” Barry says, but he says it slowly, skeptically. Accepting the responsibility of a favor to Taako, or really either of the twins, was a dangerous move. It could be anything from going grocery shopping (Lucretia had done that, eight years ago) to allowing himself to be sold into marriage with an evil warlord as a way to rob the man blind (that had been Magnus, and he’d enjoyed himself far more than was entirely necessary).

“I’ll let you know when I’m gonna cash in,” Taako says with a wink.

Barry nods and tucks both hands into his pockets. He pulls out the flower, back to its baseline state of full blue blooms, and hands it toward Lup. It’s become something of a ritual between them. Every cycle, they blossom back into being in a shower of light and static, and every cycle Barry pulls delicate blue flowers out of his pocket and hands it to Lup, who tucks it behind her ear and gives him that same sharp grin, the one that makes his knees weak.

“Thanks, babe,” she laughs, putting the flower in the long hair that Barry knows she’ll have cut off by nightfall. She reaches out and squeezes his shoulder with one hand, red nails barely digging in to the red of Barry’s uniform. His heart does a flip, and he groans internally.

He’s known Lup for years now. She’s… gods, she’s everything. She’s stunning and confident and hilarious and clever and he loves it, so much, when she smiles at him. Sometimes she puts her hand on his shoulder and his knees go shaky. Sometimes she winks at him and his heart skips a beat. Sometimes she calls him _babe_ and it’s all he can think about for days.

It’s been almost two decades. He needs to pull his shit together.  
  


“Hey, light of my life,” Lup says, plopping unceremoniously into the chair next to Barry. Her hair, starting to grow out, is pinned back in careless waves that frame her sunburned face. She beams at him, dazzlingly bright, and Barry drops his pencil.

“Yeah? What’s up?” he says. This plane is all beach, all the time, and Lup never seems to want to leave. She spends what feels like every waking second with her shoes off and feet buried in the sand. Her face is lightly reddened and covered in thick constellations of freckles that Barry doesn’t know how he didn’t notice before the sun so lovingly painted them in darker shades.

“Wanna go for a swim?” she asks, and there’s mischief in her eyes and danger in the corners of her smile.

Barry’s mouth says “Sure” but the spike of anxiety in his stomach says “Please, no.” He’s been learning to swim lately, sure, but he’s not good at it. Taako isn’t exactly trying to be an excellent teacher, and Barry isn’t exactly trying to be the best learner, either. He can survive in the water, sure, but he spends the entire time terrified of slipping beneath the waves.

“Sick!” Lup crows. She reaches behind her head and pulls off her shirt without a second thought. Barry’s mouth goes dry when he sees the bright red bikini that she’s taken to wearing underneath her day clothes, freckles delicately dotting her collarbones, skin tan and warm. He must blink one time too many, because her smile shifts from excitement to an entirely different, sharper kind of excitement, and he blushes furiously.

“I, I didn’t know you meant _now,_ ” he tries, but Lup just laughs and grabs him by the hand. She pulls him to his feet and toward the makeshift driftwood gangplank they’d been using to get in and out of the Starblaster. There’s a layer of sand on the floor of the entire ship that Dav sometimes tries to get them to clean and which Barry seems to be the only one capable of actually cleaning. Merle has dug up a few native beach plants and stuck them in pots around the kitchen. There’s a pot of some kind of crustacean bisque simmering on the stove next to a bored Taako, who shoots Barry a wink when Lup pulls him past. In the few short months they’ve been here, their entire lives have come to revolve around the laid-back beach lifestyle, and Barry has found himself wishing more than once that they could stay here forever.

Lup forgoes shoes of any kind and Barry is dragged with her, down the gangplank and onto the soft white sand. The sun is out and bright, as it always is, sending flecks of light dancing across the surface of the calm water. Far off, waves break gently on a natural sandbar.

“C’mon,” Lup urges, already heading for the water. Barry stops at the ocean’s edge.

“You know I’m not good at swimming,” he hedges.

“Yeah, babe, I know.” Lup laughs when he blushes again. Gods, he needs to get over the little tingle of joy every time she uses a dumb pet name at him. It happens often enough that he should get used to it. Why can’t he get used to it?

“Just, just don’t expect me to, to be great or anything,” he says.

“Just take off your jorts and join me in the water,” Lup says. She’s still smiling at him, sharp edges gone soft with genuine happiness, and he stops hesitating.

He gets so, so sunburned. Lup teases him, and he tries to ignore how much he likes it.  
  


“Hey, can you play the piano?” Lup asks one night as they sit on a balcony near the Legato Conservatory. The mountain looms in the background and somewhere someone is playing a harp of some kind, clear crystal notes dancing in the warm breeze.

“A little?” Barry replies. “I’m not, like, good or anything.”

“Sweet,” she says, and she’s beaming, conspiratorial and razor-edged. “I’m gonna learn the violin, and we’re gonna knock these fools’ socks off.”

And they do. They spend hours together, hours of Lup’s dazzling smile and her nimble fingers quick on violin strings, heads bent together over parchment as they puzzle out the most beautiful duet either of them have ever heard. They spend entire nights pouring over thick tomes on music theory, learning notes and staves and chords and how to slot harmonies together so flawlessly that it pricks tears in the corners of their eyes. Sometimes Barry suggests something and Lup grins at him and calls him _babe_ or _honey_ or _light of my entire fuckin’ life, my man_ and Barry thinks he might die, here and now, and have to be resurrected at the turn of the year because the most perfect person in all of existence is choosing to spend time with him.

On the night of their performance, Barry sits and stares at his hands. They’re shaking. His palms are sweaty.

Lup paces. Her heels, tall enough that he worries for the safety of her ankles, clack loudly on the marble flooring of the backstage room. Her skirt swirls about her knees and she fiddles with the bracelets on her arms. As Barry watches she reaches up to run a hand through her cropped hair, almost dislodging the flower tucked behind her ear. It’s small and blue and delicate, and with a pang he recognizes it as the same type of flower that he pulls out of his pocket at the start of every cycle. Delphinium, Merle calls it. Larkspur.

“We got this. We totally got this.”

“We got this,” Barry repeats dully, looking down to study his knees.

Lup stops pacing right in front of him and turns to look at him. He glances up at the sudden halt of the regular click of her heels on the floor. She takes a step toward him and kneels, resting steady hands on his shoulders, and fixes him with a look so intense that he can’t quite look away.

“Babe,” she says, all seriousness. “If we do this good enough, I’m gonna smooch your fuckin’ brains out, ya hear?”

“Sure,” Barry says. He laughs at the absurdity, but his traitor heart does an entire acrobatic routine at the suggestion. He starts to joke back, but is cut off by the voice of the announcer, and suddenly it’s time to go out on the stage.

“I mean it,” Lup says. Her voice is smooth and solemn, with none of her characteristic bite. She offers him a hand and he takes it and holds it all the way to the thick velvet curtain, where they have to let go.

The thing is, they do it. Barry swallows back the fear and rests his hands on piano keys and Lup drags the bow across the violin strings in one long, mournful note. They play together slowly, skirting around one another, before picking up into a frenzied dance that swirls and sings and there are tears in Barry’s eyes, he knows it, tears in his eyes and a tangled mess of unnamed emotion in his lungs and gods, he’s never been this happy.

They finish their piece, notes hanging in silent air, and Barry glances up from the keys to look at Lup.

She’s grinning, and he remembers what she said backstage, about smooching his fuckin’ brains out, and hope blooms in his chest when she takes a step toward him and holds out a hand. He crosses the stage on unsteady legs and laces his fingers with hers. They bow, and she jerks her chin to the stairs, and they run together as fast and as far as they can get, never letting go.

When they finally get completely out of earshot of the ongoing recital, Lup flops onto the ground and drags Barry down with her. They lay there in the tall grass under the fading sunset and a hysterical laugh bubbles its way out of Barry’s chest. Lup snorts, and soon they’re both wrecks, teary-eyed and red-faced with glee and sheer relief.

“I can’t believe we did it,” Lup says, breathlessly. She tries to tuck a lock of hair behind one pointed ear and frowns for a moment when she dislodges the blue flower. It falls to the grass and she picks it up carefully, twirling it between her fingers before holding it out to Barry. He takes it delicately, and something in his chest sings because they’ve done this so many times, almost fifty times, and the simple exchange of a flower from one person to another shouldn’t hold as much meaning as this does.

Lup draws in a breath and tilts her head to look at Barry. Her smile is firmly in place, razored and wild and with something wicked lurking just beneath the surface, and Barry has the wild thought that he could cut himself on the edges of that grin.

Lup grabs his face in both of her perfect hands and tugs him in for a kiss that steals all of the oxygen from his lungs and saps all of the lingering fear from his chest, and it turns out that Barry was wrong about her smile being so sharp. When she laughs into their kiss it’s nothing but softness, nothing but tenderness, nothing but long-awaited relief.

**Author's Note:**

> i already have a second and third part to this swimming around in my head good lord
> 
> delphinium flowers symbolize joy, lightness, and an open heart! they're blue and small and really pretty!


End file.
